Under Sonderbehandlung 14f13 (Special Treatment 14f13), about 5,000 persons were killed in Bernburg between 1941 and April 1943. In the main these were Jews from the concentration camps Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Groß-Rosen, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen.

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The victims were then photographed and led to the gas chamber.

A few years ago, I visited the Euthanasia Center at Hartheim Castle and learned that the victims were also photographed there before gassing. What was the purpose of photographing the victims before they were gassed? Where are those photographs now?

Years ago, in the early days of the Internet, I saw some of the photographs that were taken at the Euthanasia Centers. The subjects in the photos were easily identifiable as being mentally and/or physically defective. These photos are no longer shown on the Internet, as far as I know. The Nazis also filmed the victims as they were walking into the Euthanasia Centers. These films, which used to be shown on the History Channel, revealed that some of the victims were walking on all fours; other victims were obviously mentally defective. The films are no longer shown, as far as I know.

The gassing of Jews at the Euthanasia Centers took place before gas chambers were built at the concentration camps. For example, at Dachau, the gas chamber was not built until 1942. There were gas chambers at Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen but they were built after the euthanasia program stopped.

Why have the photographs of the victims who were gassed at Bernberg and Hartheim been withdrawn? Is it because the official story of the Holocaust is that the prisoners who were sent to Bernberg and Hartheim to be gassed were Jews who were not sick or mentally abnormal?

In the news article that I quoted above, it is implied that Jews were sent from Buchenwald to Bernberg to be gassed just because they were Jews. In 1941, there was a gas chamber in the main camp at Auschwitz; why send the Jews to a Euthanasia center?

In 1997, I visited Dachau for the first time and purchased the original Guide Book, written by Barbara Distel in 1972. This quote is from that book:

Transports of Invalids

Subsequently to the mass murder of the insane, which was referred to as euthanasia, systematic killing of persons who were sick and incapable of work began within the concentration camps. The legal basis was provided by Hitler’s “Euthanasia Proclamation” which stated that the “. . . incurably ill . . could, upon the careful review of the condition of their illness, be granted the mercy of death.”

In the summer of 1941 the camp physician at Dachau was commanded to register those prisoners who were sick or incapable of work. Some weeks later a medical commission from Berlin arrived to pass judgment. It was explained to the sick and disabled that they were to be sent to another camp where the work was lighter and where later they would be set free. The prisoners greeted this news trustingly, awaiting their transfer impatiently. As “Invalid Transports” departed from Dachau in quick succession during the winter of 1941/42, it soon became clear to those remaining that their friends were going to their death.

Prisoners summoned for transport had to await departure in the bath. While there, better articles of clothing, including shoes, were exchanged for inferior ones; glasses and artificial limbs were confiscated.

They were transported in trucks at night. Their destination was Hartheim castle near Linz, which had served as an asylum for the insane before the war; here they were gassed to death. Weeks later the relatives would receive a death notice issued by the registrar’s office of the Dachau concentration camp. Circulatory diseases and heart failure were usually given as the cause of death.

When the prisoners in Dachau had conclusive evidence about the fate of their comrades – recognition of articles of clothing which had been returned, contact by letter with relatives who had received the death notices – they tried desperately to protect their fellow-prisoners from further “Invalid Transports”. When renewed selections took place, they succeeded in hiding several of those who were obviously sick, and there were cases where a name on the transport list could be replaced by that of a prisoner who had already died.

But the prisoners were powerless to stop the transports: 3,016 inmates of Dachau were sent in 1942 to their death at Hartheim castle.

In 1942 a gas chamber was also built in the Dachau concentration camp, but inexplicably, it was never used. It was located within the new crematorium, a larger building whose construction with four ovens became necessary when the first crematorium, which had only one oven, proved inadequate.

According to Barbara Distel, the former director of the Dachau Memorial Site, prisoners were sent to be gassed at Hartheim Castle, but after 1942, this stopped and a gas chamber was built in the Dachau concentration camp, but inexplicably, it was never used.

The information given at the Dachau Memorial Site in recent years has changed. Tour guides now tell visitors that the Dachau gas chamber was used.

After the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, where the genocide of the Jews was planned, the Jews were sent to camps in the East. The gas chamber in Dachau was built in 1942 but never used because all the Jews were being sent to places like Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek and Auschwitz to be gassed. After 1942, Dachau was mainly a camp for political prisoners, illegal combatants, and criminals. The Nazis did many things that didn’t make sense, like building gas chambers at camps where there were virtually no Jews.

There was testimony at the Nuremberg IMT that there was a gas chamber at Buchenwald, including a couple of Catholic priests who testified in an affidavit that there was a gas chamber at Buchenwald. It was mentioned in the closing statement of the prosecution at Nuremberg that the Buchenwald gas chamber had been proved during the trial.